FW: descriptive scholarly accounts of religious identityandjudicial behav...

[Rick Duncan]

Paul writes:

"One side wants their
 crosses and public land and will make any argument to keep them. That 
side is unconcerned about any larger claims except the outcome that they
 get to put their religious symbols
 on public land and thus get the government to implicitly back their 
faith.  This may indeed be a function of their religious values rather 
than constituitional values, since in other contexts many of these 
people are against "big government" -- except when
 it comes to big crosses and other monuments on government land.  
Perhaps all this is theological.  If you believe that you have a mission
 to convert everyone to your religious beliefs, then why not use the 
government to do it.

 
The
 other wants religious liberty for all Americans and thus believes that 
the government should keep its hands out of the religion business. 
Perhaps that is also theological. If
 you don't think it is your job to convert others maybe you think it is 
not the government's job either."


I love the way
 Paul identifies the good guys (his team) and the bad 
guys (the 
other team).

Here is another way of looking at it:

One 
side--the bad guys-- wishes to censor public displays they find 
offensive and impose its narrow view of the public square to exercise a 
heckler's veto on everyone else.

The other side--the good 
guys--values tolerance and diversity and merely wishes
to have 
displays that are meaningful to them be part of a public square open to 
everyone else. They wish not to control public culture, but merely to 
have a fair share of it.

Cheers, Rick

Rick Duncan 
Welpton Professor of Law 
University of Nebraska College of Law 
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902


"And against the constitution I have never raised a storm,It's the scoundrels who've corrupted it that I want to reform" --Dick Gaughan (from the song, Thomas Muir of Huntershill)




      
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